Friday, May 11, 2007

Proportion please

Sometimes I fear that people might feel that I am a bit of a monomaniac fanatic. maybe indeed I am, but this little comment persuades me that my own green inkery is a nature when compared to the experts.

This comment from Roz Denny of the UK Metric Association really needs DK to give it full treatment

Imperial past But Roz Denny, spokeswoman for the UK Metric Association, said maintaining the current system was "a nonsense" and that Britain should not be seen as "a heritage theme park" that did not change. "We are now going to have this crazy double measurement system forever," she said. She went on: "We are trying to put ourselves forward as a modern country putting our imperial past in perspective, like slavery, and here we are glorifying one element of it."

Oh yes of course silly me, all that drinking pints of milk and measuring our height n feet and inches is tantamount to supporting slavery. What planet is this woman on?I wonder, if slaves had been in 57cm leg irons, or hung up on the 'meterarm' or maybe sold by the kilo rather than the pound I take it the whole Atlantic trade would have been acceptable modern.

And I love the idea that the metric system, based as it is on a false measurement, is nice and modern. Lets think, the US is a heritage theme park, with no thought for the future, where entrepreneurs are hamstrung by outdated concepts, and where, of course no Nobel prizes in any of the scientific disciplines are ever won. Meanwhile the metric world of continental Europe is of course driving forward human knowledge...(US and Britain together have won 270 Nobel Prizes: Germany, France, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark together have 269, of course if you add in Ausrtalia pre metric (1970) another 5, Canada (1980) 7, Ireland (1992) 5, New Zealand (1972) 2 and so on)

The woman is a fanatic, whose sense of proportion should be measured in nanometers.